John Wise was a familiar figure in northcentral Pennsylvania in the mid-1800s. Danville, Montour County, was included in his barnstorming tour. Lynn Reichen, president of the Montour County Historical Society, provided this story in December of 2009. 

    Before there were astronauts, there were aeronauts, also known as balloonists. John Wise, who was born in Lancaster County in February of 1808 and completed 462 balloon ascensions in his lifetime. He was described as an adventurous and inquisitive young boy fascinated by aerial pursuits. Among his experiments was one involving the family cat and a homemade parachute. The cat was dropped from a local church steeple and landed safely on the ground. Wise conducted a similar experiment many years later over the skies of Danville, which I will share later in this story. 

    Although balloon ascensions were common at county fairs and carnivals, Wise never observed an ascension before he made his first one in Philadelphia in 1835. In the nineteenth century, many ascensions were made just for the novelty of the event, but John Wise's approach was from a scientific perspective. Each ascension gave him a chance to conduct scientific investigations of the atmosphere, pneumatics, and hydrostatics. 1 

    Wise barnstormed throughout central Pennsylvania and across the nation. Newspapers and Montour County history books say he made several stops in Montour County. 

     In Arthur Toye Foulke’s “My Danville, Where the Bright Water’s Meet” there is an account of two visits made to Danville in June of 1841. Foulke describes Wise’s twenty-eighth excursion in the area, which was undertaken on June 12^th, 1841. “For many issues in advance, the Danville Intelligencer, a local newspaper at the time, ballyhooed with illustrated advertisements, this first ascension from the courthouse square. Mid the blare of a brass band, Mr. Wise, having taken several precautionary steps, set sail “into the upper regions” at exactly 2:05 p.m. 

    Fifty-five minutes later he was sighted five miles west of Pottsville. At 4:00 p.m. he was three miles east of Reading. At 4:25 he landed at Morgantown, Berks County, Pennsylvania. He had traveled eighty-seven miles in two hours and twenty-five minutes, or at the rate of nearly thirty-seven miles an hour, an amazing speed considering the time, and the lack of equipment to guide or control the ship. Such a vessel at that time was subject to buffeting by every current of encountered air. 

    Wise found the air much colder over the mountains than above level and cultivated land at even height and made notes to that effect. Called the “Great Eastern”, his balloon had a capacity of 56,000 gallons or about 8,000 cubic feet of gas, and was covered with 472 yards of pure silk.” 2 

    Foulke goes on to say that a week later, on June 19, 1841, Wise took off on his 29^th and last flight in Montour County. Several thousand people, each of whom had paid fifty cents to watch, were on hand to see his liftoff from the Danville Courthouse yard. 

    It was during this appearance that Wise introduced the parachute and other “novelties” to his awestruck audience. When he had reached a quarter of a mile in the air, he threw overboard a live cat (maybe that’s where the phrase scaredy cat came from) attached to a parachute. The cat landed safely. Wise landed just below Blue Hill on the other side of the Susquehanna River. The balloon was eventually brought back to a common area on East Market between Ferry and Pine, where he gave in his own words, “an exhibition of the process of ex-flation.” 

Again, it’s important to emphasize what Foulke says in his story that Wise was no carnival balloonist. He was the first to observe the jet stream, noting there was a "great river of air which always blows from west to east". On August 17^th, 1859, he made the first flight of local air mail in the U.S. from Lafayette, Indiana to Crawfordsville, Indiana, carrying 123 letters and 23 circulars. His trip of 25 miles ended when he was forced to land by lack of buoyancy.  

    During the Mexican War, Wise devised a plan to take the city of Vera Cruz, which was guarded by the imposing fortress of San Juan de Ulua. Wise suggested fabricating a gas balloon capable of lifting 20,000 pounds, attaching it to a five-mile-long cable, and flying the craft over the fortress so that 18,000 pounds of explosives could be dropped on it. Wise sent his ambitious idea to the War Department, but it appears to have gone unanswered. John Wise pursued his goal of crossing the Atlantic--but without success. 

    Detailed descriptions of his ascensions and experiments are found in his book, Through the Air, published in 1873. 

    On September 29, 1879, at age 71, Wise took off from Sterling, Illinois, with a passenger, George Burr. Wise was never seen again, but Burr's body washed up on the Indiana shore of Lake Michigan. 3 

    Wise and his balloons were curiosities wherever he traveled in Pennsylvania and across the nation. Considered the “Father of Aeronautics”, he was a native Pennsylvanian who made appearances in Montour County and the surrounding area.